“Love, death, and the changing of the seasons” is the theme of this group of Sunday night poems, and tonight’s poem is about the second item in that list. It’s what used to be called a memento mori, and these days it hits a lot harder with me than it used to. “Otherwise,” by Jane Kenyon:
I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver candlesticks. It might have been otherwise. I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
Kenyon died of leukemia at the age of 47; “Otherwise” is the next to last poem in her final book of poems, Constance.
If you’d like to read more
- Poetry Foundation: A biography of and selected poems by Jane Kenyon.
- Internet Archive:
- Collected Poems, by Jane Kenyon.
- Constance, by Jane Kenyon.
- Bookshop.org:
- Collected Poems, by Jane Kenyon.
- The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon, by Jane Kenyon. Selected poems chosen by Kenyon’s husband, the poet Donald Hall.